I can't believe we are already half way through our school year. February will be a very busy month for us. We have Catholic Schools week, Valentine's Day, Groundhog's Day, 100th Day, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Presidents day, and dental health month...whew that's a lot!

January was also very busy for us in First Grade. In anticipation of Valentine's Day and the 100th Day of school our class made a goal. Our goal is to perform 100 kind deeds by our 100th day of school. If a classmate does something kind, we earn a heart to put up on our bulletin board. Will we make it?

Math-We have wrapped up Unit 4 which was all about place value. We have learned: how to make a new group of ten, how to count by tens and ones, what decade numbers are, how to read and write 2 digit numbers, how to add a 1-digit number to a 2-digit number, and how to compare two 2-digit numbers. On Fridays we played math games that reinforced these skills. The students love playing the search the room game. Ask your child about it.Reading-We reviewed vowel sounds a, i, o, and u. We learned about double consonants found at the end of words. We also worked with r blends, s blends, and l blends found at the beginning of words. We also looked at blends found at the end of words. We practiced telling the main idea of a story and then supporting it with details. With that we discussed the importance of telling the events of a story in the correct order. We reviewed putting words in alphabetical order. We learned that a statement is a sentence that tells something. It has a capital letter at the beginning and a period at the end. It also has a subject and an action. We reviewed singular and plural nouns, and antonyms and synonyms. We learned prepositions for where and when.Writing-We are working on nonfiction writing. This type of writing can also be called all about or a teaching story. In a nonfiction story we see facts. We learned how to write a good beginning and ending to these types of stories. We also learned about some features we find in nonfiction books such as: labels, table of contents, maps, diagrams, close ups, cut ins, captions, real photos, fun facts, and comparisons. We are working on organizing our writing into categories and putting those into a table of contents. Social Studies-We started our unit 2 in Social Studies, Where we live. Questions you may want to ask your child to reinforce what we learned: name 3 types of water and 3 types of land, what continent/country/state/town do you live in, what are the 4 seasons, and what type of weather do we have in those seasons?Science-In Science we finished our unit about the sun. Religion-We discussed the greatest commandment "you shall love your neighbor as yourself". With this we have been talking a lot about treating people the way you want to be treated, and taking care of our own bodies. We talked about the church year and the special times we have to praise and thank God. We heard the story about Andrew and Peter, who left their nets to follow Jesus. We also heard the story about Jesus calming the storm on the sea.